Center for Dance + Wellness

Composer Robert Schumann’s song cycle “Dichterliebe” is retold as a choreographed dance opera in 16 short movements. It considers the universal theme of love and what if someone enters our lives and we are never the same again? The solo singer is woven through the work as both the protagonist and narrator of the poetry with the dance ensemble expressing both his inner and outer worlds of transformation.

This 90-minute piece uses dance and theater to examine the often-complex attitudes of society towards women and women towards themselves. Renegade beauticians, Christmas Nativity pageants and childhood best friends join an irreverent band of characters in a world where movement is inspired by fashion magazines and childhood photographs, texts from beauty advertisements serve as everyday noise and Carolyn Ingalls and Harriet Oleson duke it out in the battle for ultimate role model.

15 Gestures...For All That Struck the Earth is a quartet set to Allegri's Renaissance Mass piece Miserere. Space and time are rigorously applied to a string of 15 gestures, contrasting abstraction with movement drama and ritual.

The Angel Who Would Not Speak to God is a solo that contemplates the enormous suffering of mankind in spite of a benevolent God. It is inspired by the short story of the same title by Devin J. Poore. Zbigniew Preisner's Offertorium for strings and soprano accompanies.

Another Valentine is a duet featuring the heartbreaking account of one woman's inner most desires. Inspired by the painting of Gustave Klimt and text from Jeanette Winterson's The Passion, a pivotal love affair is distilled and blown apart through movement.

Valentine, a work for six dancers, blends modern dance with theatrical collage. Notions of first love, lust and loss are played against a backdrop of musical excerpts by Philip Glass, Sally Potter and Nat King Cole, the poetry of e.e. cummings, and text from the film Casablanca. Imagery inspired by Auguste Rodin and Gustave Klimt are also featured.

The Mourning After is a dance for five women, chronicling their journey from the anticipation of the moment of death, through grief, to an ultimate newfound discovery of the joy of life and memory. Elements of Western mourning practices, religious imagery, and pagan rites are drawn upon to chart the range of human emotions spanned in response to death. Using loose theatrical direction, the dance is a meditation on the moments before the crucifixion of Christ. Drawing on Medieval and Renaissance

Dances for a duet in the pastoral refuge of the La Guardia Community Gardens in Greenwich Village, New York City.

The interweaving of natural forms, live dancing sculptures and city passerby's mirror New York's modern day mosaic of city life and urban oasis.

Solo in collaboration with visual artist Franki DeSaro.

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Re-creation of 1920's performer sensation Josephine Baker's seminal Banana Dance. This piece was reconstructed from the Performing Arts Library at Lincoln Center Collection archival footage and premiered at the 1920's themed book launch party of author Alaya Dawn Johnson's book Moonshine at New York City's Ico Gallery.

Solo in collaboration with visual artist Mark Weiss. Inspired by Weiss’ painting Guiding Light it uses his allegorical setting of a lone figure in a cavernous space filled with radiant color to explore the awakening of a soul.

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